When Cody Jinks went sober, plenty of things about his life and career changed… including his band’s tour rider.
The rocking country music artist (who actually toured with a heavy metal group this past summer) is one of the most underrated acts in all of music. He puts on quite the live show, and while he and his band used to live a hardcore lifestyle of drinking and performing, they’ve settled things down quite a bit in recent years.
One of the bigger pieces of Jink’s story and journey as of late is the fact that he decided to give up drinking in 2023 – two days after his 43rd birthday. Though it was a difficult thing to cut out of his life, he noticed positive changes almost immediately. Jinks lost 15 pounds, and in the process, he also decided to give up smoking cigarettes. It was all done in an effort to be healthier, and less dependent on vices.
In a conversation with Jarrod Morris on The Jarrod Morris Vibe, Jinks explained that he just wanted to be a better version of himself:
“We’re all trying to get better. Be better husbands. Be better fathers. We did that honky tonkin’ back in the day. We did it. We got the t-shirts. Let’s grow up and be better.”
Part of that “growing up” was realizing that playing live, writing songs, and recording didn’t have to done in tandem with drinking.
Jinks admitted that, as an artist, he thought throwing back alcohol was just part of being on the road. After all, all of the country music greats did it, so why shouldn’t he? That’s at least what his thought process was:
“I thought for years that’s just how you did it. You stayed on the road, stayed f-ed up, wrote songs, recorded them. Rinse, repeat… playing live, you’d find your regiment and you’d stick to that. Couple of beers too many, or a couple of beers not enough, and you wouldn’t be in the right head space.”
Part of that “growing up” that Jinks mentioned earlier was modifying the tour rider a bit.
For those that don’t know, a rider is just a list of things that artists and bands request to have in their green rooms/dressing rooms. It can vary from bottles of bourbon to specific snacks. Jinks says as he got sober – and a majority of his band did as well – their rider changed dramatically:
“We used to get cases and pallets of Miller Lite, cases and cases of whiskey and booze. We’d drink it all. We had to relearn how to do everything sober. Half the guys in the band have quit drinking.
Our rider used to be five cases of beer and two bottles of whiskey. Now it’s Topo Chico and Nerds Gummy Clusters. Topo Chico, non alcoholic beer, Nerds Gummy Clusters and a deli tray.”
That right there is what you call a complete 180.
Jinks and the band still have a couple of things on the rider that give them their fix. The Topo Chico bottles still give the band something to hold in their hands, and the Nerds Gummy Clusters… well, they’re straight up sugar. It’s a pick your poison scenario, and at least the candy isn’t going to cause the same issues that beer and whiskey would.
You can hear Cody Jinks talk more about it in the interview below:
